Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will put all my questions in one contribution, if I may. I thank Mr. Murphy for his, as always, very comprehensive submission which is a mine of information that we can use into the future. It will not surprise Mr. Murphy that I want to start with the BAR. We tried to get information on the specifics of this from the chief of staff of Commissioner Ferreira at the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, REGIO, who appeared before this committee last year. We know that the first instalment was paid in December. This is expected to be a short and sharp expenditure period so as Mr. Murphy rightly says, for capital works we need to be up and running now because the final payment will be made in 2025, with three significant payments paid before that. I am interested in Mr. Murphy's steer on this but it seems to me that it will be problematic from an audit perspective to talk in terms of reimbursing abstract losses as opposed to something that is specific. In terms of Rosslare Europort, temporary measures have been put in place in preparation for Brexit which basically have sited customs, custom checks and immigration checks outside the perimeter of the port, which is something the Commission would never normally accept, for obvious reasons. Bringing goods, cargo and people outside of the port and up the road to be checked, from an audit perspective, is not perfect. The idea now is to rebuild those checkpoints within the confines of the port. It strikes me that this would be an ideal project for funding. Has any pre-clearance request for that come past the Court of Auditors yet?

My second question relates to how things are going to work into the future. Mr. Murphy seemed to imply in his presentation that the European Public Prosecutor's Office, EPPO, will be the new oversight prosecution authority for fraud but in terms of the legislation to partake in that in this jurisdiction, Ireland is not part of the EPPO. A total of 22 of the 27 member states are part of the EPPO but we are not and part of the explanation for that is our common law jurisdiction. How will that fit? Is it expected that in the future we will be part of the EPPO or will there be a different prosecution service for fraud in relation to this country? I am not sure how that would function.

My third and final question relates to - I love the euphemism - errors that Mr. Murphy instances in terms of accounting. We are used to looking at public auditing through the Comptroller and Auditor General and there will always be underestimates and mistakes made. Any business, never mind any State, will have to endure that. Cohesion funding will continue to grow in terms of the volume of money that is spent. I am very supportive of cohesion funding. As Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, I was responsible for cohesion funding and I chaired the cohesion Council during the Irish Presidency. One of the things that struck me at the time was that unexpended cohesion allocations were not reallocated to eligible projects. The total budget package in the multi-annual financial framework, MFF, that set the expenditure for cohesion funding was not sacrosanct.

Unexpended funding was rebated to member states as opposed to being reallocated to eligible cohesion projects. That struck me as odd. Is that still the case or is all of the allocation for cohesion funding expected to be expended in its totality?

I will make one final observation with regard to the GNI calculation referred to by Deputy Ó Murchú. It was extraordinarily unfortunate that the period of economic collapse for Ireland was excluded and the calculation was made on our economic recovery. I will leave it at "unfortunate".